The State of MSP Project Delivery 2026
What the numbers say about how managed service providers plan, staff, and ship IT projects — and where delivery breaks down.
Managed service providers live or die on delivery. Yet most MSPs plan projects in a PSA module built for tickets, staff them from the same bench that answers the help desk, and find out a go-live has slipped only when the client asks. This report pulls together what credible, published industry data says about the state of MSP project delivery — and where the gaps are.
Every figure below links to its source. This is a synthesis of published research, including broader project-management and professional-services samples; it is not a survey of Current customers or a forecast of their results.
The market MSPs sell into is large and compounding double digits — a rising tide, but one that invites the competition and consolidation MSPs now cite as a top concern.
Canalys managed-services market data, reported by MSP-X (2024)Independent forecasts put the market on track to roughly double by decade's end — demand, not demand generation, is the MSP tailwind.
Grand View Research (2025)By organizations' own reporting, roughly one in four projects fails to deliver what it set out to. Delivery, not sales, is the industry's soft spot.
PMI Pulse of the Profession 2024 (2024)Scope creep is the most-cited mechanism of slippage, and it's controllable: the best-run organizations hold it to 23% of projects while the worst let it reach 37%.
PMI Pulse of the Profession 2024 (2024)When projects fail they don't just miss goals — they burn roughly a quarter of their budget, money that flows straight off an MSP's already-thin project margin.
PMI Pulse of the Profession 2024 (2024)The database covers large projects across IT, construction and other sectors. These figures are not an estimate of the success rate for ordinary MSP projects.
Bent Flyvbjerg interview with Thought Economics (Oxford database) (2023)Utilization sits below the long-standing 75% target — the gap between billed and paid hours is where services profit quietly leaks, and it caps how many projects a bench can deliver.
SPI benchmark, reported by Mosaic (2023)In SPI's sample, PSA users reported higher utilization, project margin and EBITDA, and nearly 90% of high-performing firms used a PSA. These comparisons show an association, not that adopting software caused the difference.
2024 SPI Professional Services Maturity Benchmark (Kantata) (2024)The MSP-specific proof point: as project pipelines thinned, technician utilization fell and project margins nearly halved in a single year. Capacity planning is now a profitability issue.
Service Leadership Index Q4 2024 (ConnectWise) (2025)Co-managed IT is now mainstream, not niche — the majority of MSP project work happens shoulder-to-shoulder with an in-house team, raising the bar for shared visibility and coordination.
Datto/Kaseya State of the MSP Industry (2025 Look Ahead) (2024)The number-one reason clients hire MSPs is an internal skills/capacity gap — the exact condition that drives co-managed engagements and dependency-heavy project work.
Datto/Kaseya State of the MSP Industry (2025 Look Ahead) (2024)After a 2023 slump, dealmaking rebounded sharply as platform consolidators bought scale — pushing independent MSPs to professionalize operations to compete or become attractive targets.
Canalys / Jay McBain (via Channel Futures) (2024)Market growth depends on what is being measured
Canalys estimated the managed-services market at roughly $488B in 2023. Separately, Grand View Research's May 2025 forecast projected $731B by 2030 at 14.1% CAGR from 2025. These are different estimates with different periods and definitions, not one growth series. ConnectWise's Q4 2024 benchmark reported managed-services revenue growth of 1.0% for that quarter and average MSP adjusted EBITDA of 11.1%. Market forecasts do not predict the results of an individual MSP.
Project outcomes vary across studies
Flyvbjerg's database of more than 16,000 large projects reports 8.5% finishing on time and on budget, and 0.5% also delivering the promised benefits. In PMI's separate 2024 report, respondents said an average of 73.8% of their organizations' completed projects met business goals. These samples use different definitions and cover industries beyond MSPs. They provide context for delivery risk, not an MSP project failure rate.
Scope creep and budget loss vary across organizations
PMI shows scope creep hits about 30% of projects on average, and failed projects burn roughly 26% of their budget. The spread is enormous: top-quartile performers hold scope creep to 23% of projects and budget loss to 20%, while bottom-quartile organizations see 37% and 29%. The difference tracks with structure — disciplined scoping, dependency awareness, and defined delivery practices — exactly what a purpose-built project module is meant to enforce.
Technician utilization is where project profit is won or lost
Professional-services utilization sits around 68.9%, below the 75% target — and for MSPs the cost of that gap is now vivid: ConnectWise reported MSP project-services gross margins collapsing from 23% to 12.9% in a single year, driven specifically by lower project-team utilization as pipelines thinned. When technicians sit idle or are poorly scheduled against dependencies, project margin evaporates. Resource-aware scheduling and capacity planning are no longer nice-to-haves; they are the margin.
Reported results for PSA users
SPI's 2024 benchmark reports that surveyed PSA users had about 10% higher billable utilization, 24% higher project margin and 28% higher EBITDA than non-users. Nearly 90% of high-performing firms used a PSA. Kaseya's benchmark reports that 85% of MSPs called automation a must-have. These are reported associations and opinions, not measured gains from Current; staffing, management and customer mix may also affect results.
Co-managed IT and consolidation are reshaping the work
83% of MSPs now offer co-managed IT, and the top reason clients hire an MSP (61%) is lacking sufficient in-house expertise — so a growing share of project work happens jointly with a client's internal team, raising the stakes on shared visibility. Simultaneously, MSP-channel M&A rebounded roughly 50% in 2024 as consolidators bought scale. Both trends reward MSPs that can demonstrate mature, repeatable project delivery — to co-managed clients and acquirers alike.
Methodology
Figures are drawn from the linked industry reports and publisher summaries. PMI and Datto/Kaseya link to their reports; ConnectWise and Kantata link to the publishers' summaries, and Grand View Research links to its May 2025 announcement. The Canalys market figure, SPI utilization figure and Flyvbjerg project figures link to secondary reporting or an interview, identified beside each number. The samples, dates and definitions differ, so the figures should not be combined into one trend or treated as Current customer outcomes. This is a synthesis of third-party research, not a Current customer study.
Sources
- 1.PMI — Pulse of the Profession 2024 — pmi.org
- 2.Datto/Kaseya — State of the MSP Industry (2025 Look Ahead) — datto.com
- 3.ConnectWise — Service Leadership Index, Q4 2024 — connectwise.com
- 4.Kantata / SPI — 2024 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark — kantata.com
- 5.Grand View Research — Managed Services Market forecast — grandviewresearch.com
- 6.Bent Flyvbjerg — 'How Big Things Get Done' (Oxford project database) — thoughteconomics.com